Are big changes being rolled out at Digg? Is it a glitch? Why can’t we Digg stories?

These questions have been rolling over to me all afternoon and at this point, I have no idea what the answer is. Something glitchy is happening at Digg.com right now. Some stories need to be refreshed several times to get a valid “token” to digg it. Other times, pages load up and show that you’re logged off altogether.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the titling, it will be an honor to be on a panel with MrBabyMan and MSaleem at the 2010 ROFLCon. From April 30 through May 1, we’ll be touring the hallowed halls of MIT and rubbing elbows with some of the brightest content creators, meme creators, and memes themselves in this second annual event.

From the site:

“Another two days and two nights of the most epic internet culture conference ever assembled. Informed commentators suggest that this may be the most important gathering of humanity since the fall of the tower of Babel. And yes, we’re still looking to get Goatse.”

When I first saw the advertisement that Toyota had placed on Digg.com, I was skeptical. After all, Digg and most social news sites in general are not considered a “PR venue” to help in times of crisis.

After reviewing their landing page and seeing exactly how they have integrated, I have to say that I like it.

With the recent Toyota recalls putting a major blemish on the formerly-bulletproof automaker, they have begun an aggressive campaign to regain the trust of their loyal consumers.

The Toyota landing page rests on the Digg.com domain and highlights stories broken down into three categories:

The statement could be pushed over to just about any true Web 2.0 site where voting and popularity determine the success of a piece of content. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace – overrun by spam. Mixx, Propeller, Yahoobuzz – spam havens.

For social news powerhouses Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon to be so changed by the presence of gobs and gobs of spam hits a little harder. They are the sites where I started my journey in Web 2.0. They are the shiny beacons of user-controlled, traffic-generating goodness that made mainstream media look to the people for their opinions and discoveries.

They are, for all intents and purposes, shells of what they should be, and spam is to blame. Perhaps more importantly, how they handled spam over the years has caused them to close their networks in one way or another through a series of witchhuntesque spam countermeasures.